AT least 48 girls have been staying at the Fort Augusta Adult Correctional Centre for well over a year, Commissioner of Corrections Major Richard Reese confirmed yesterday.

But this, Major Reese said, is not a breach of the law as the girls are housed in separate dormitories from their adult counterparts and utilise separate spaces.

“This is so and has been so for over a year now. We don’t have a female juvenile remand centre, we never have and so the court has placed them there (Fort Augusta),” he told the Observer, adding that his department was acting within the realms of government regulations concerning the housing of inmates.

Current legislations prohibit juvenile inmates from being kept in the same location as adult offenders.

Yesterday Major Reese explained that Fort Augusta became a viable option for the state to house young female offenders, due to persistent problems with housing them at places of safety.

“They would always run away and they were exposed to several kinds of dangers,” he explained.

Meanwhile, the commissioner of corrections disclosed that government was currently trying to complete the construction of a juvenile remand centre at Montpelier, St James. This, he said, should solve the current problems by creating space to hold both male and female juvenile offenders. Construction of the Montpelier centre is expected to be completed by July.